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by blinkymach12
1916 days ago
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Hey Patrick! Thanks for the article. "Producing Artifacts" is definitely what we called that at Fog Creek, and I think our cousins at Stack may have used a different term but followed much the same spirit. I didn't realize until now that that was a term from our little software microcosm, I had assumed it was one of the terms that was known broadly in the startupverse. I definitely came to my opinions around it through my interactions with the Business of Software conference and (later) Microconf, and I think in parallel Stack Overflow came to much the same conclusions as we did at FC. Stack also lead with something in its early days which pushed us to go further, which was that they had a "default open" policy on all their artifacts-- code, company writing, etc. This specifically was inspiring for us at FC and many of us sort of implicitly adopted it. We doubled-down on our artifact publishing, leading to a bunch of open source contributions, blog posts, conference talks, etc. Interestingly (and to your point!) I think that those public artifacts for the most part didn't impact the company very much (as much as we did try to harvest the artifacts for blogging/marketing/recruiting purposes), but they unquestionably strengthened the careers of the folks who created them. "Make sure your work is creating artifacts; Collect and share your artifacts to multiply their impact." Remains among my top items of career advice for software folks. |
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There are complete, top-to-bottom, ship-ready apps, with localization, testing, documentation, provisioning, etc. Someone can, literally, clone any of my repos, and produce a full-feature, ready-to-ship application.
I have many, many, articles and blog posts, explaining, in great detail, how I work, think, design, test, collaborate, and develop. I'm a fairly decent writer.
Also, in my experience, no one has ever actually looked at any of this, when it comes to evaluating me. I'm not famous, I'm not young, and I guess I don't "present" too well, so I assume that my work is not compelling (I think it is, but that's just me).
After a few of these, I realized that I am better off, not looking to work with someone else. Makes me sad, but accepting that was one of the best things I ever did for myself. As it turns out, I have found a team, working on a 501(c)(3) startup, that gave me a chance to develop an application. They seem happy with the work I'm doing (ecstatic, even).
These days, I never go a day without working on ship. I have been shipping for decades. My GH id is pretty much solid green (and it's not gamed). I just love to code, and there are few joys more comprehensive, than releasing product, and seeing it used.
Even my small projects (like the one I just released) involve full branding, testing, and documentation. Even my test harnesses are full release-quality applications, with localization.
It's just that, these days, I do it for myself; not someone else. I'm fortunate, in being able to do that. The scale, out of necessity, is much more humble, but it feels quite gratifying.